Today, Trump Is Scaling Back Rules Restricting Air And Water Pollution

Last week, Roland made an announcement: we're done with India. I've been there at least half a dozen times since 1970-- once for over a year-- so I wasn't especially disturbed by the proclamation but I asked why. He said that the air pollution is so deadly in the major cities that it was absolutely unsafe. He has some app he uses that measures air pollution around the world. Last week when the fires in California had driven L.A.'s pollution levels into "unhealthy" (150 was the number and we were supposed to not go outside), the Delhi number was 999, and would have been higher had the app gone into 4 digits. Over the weekend, The Economist backed Roland up. "As part of a 'public-health emergency' declared on November 1st in Delhi, millions of face-masks are being distributed to children. Schools will shut until at least November 5th. The cause is polluted air, which Delhi’s chief minister says has turned the city into a 'gas chamber'. The measures are severe but not unusual. In the past year, schools around the world-- in Thailand and Malaysia, Mexico and America-- have cancelled classes on bad-air days. Air pollution does indeed do terrible things to schoolchildren. Globally, says the World Health Organisation, more than 90% of children under 15 breathe air that puts their health at serious risk. The young are especially susceptible, because their lungs are still developing and their breathing is faster than adults’, so they take in more pollutants relative to their body weight. A British study found that on school-runs young children were exposed to 30% more pollutants than the adults accompanying them, because their height puts them closer to exhaust pipes. One of the most common ailments that results is asthma. Poorer children are still more vulnerable, since their schools tend to be near busy roads."

Children’s brains are also at risk. This is not because pollution confines them to home. Assiduous teachers in Malaysia and China may instruct students online on days when the smog keeps them away from school. In any case, research in 2014 by the Harvard Kennedy School into the effect of shutting schools because of snow shows that missing a few days does not appear to impair learning.

Much more dangerous is the toll that pollution takes on cognitive development and mental health. Research, also conducted in 2014, found that air pollution harmed Israeli students' exam performance. A study in Cincinnati, Ohio, showed an increase in pollution to be correlated with a higher number of psychiatric-hospital visits by children troubled by anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Even very young students are aware of the pollution problem: in a survey by Sustrans, a charity that aims to reduce car use, 45% of British pupils aged four to 11 said they were worried about air quality. Such “eco-anxiety” is the reason that some American school boards are riven by disagreements between environmentalists, who maintain that children need to understand climate change, and administrators who say studying it will traumatise them.

Clean-air campaigners have tried to stem the damage. In Britain, for example, they have, besides encouraging student pick-ups and drop-offs on foot or by bicycle, recommended imposing no-car zones around schools in Birmingham, or, in Sheffield, placing hedges between roads and playgrounds. Such measures are no substitute for bigger changes, though. If trends persist, warns the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, air pollution will cut 1% from global GDP by 2060, in large part from lost agricultural yield, lower worker productivity and higher health costs. Apart from choking on the fumes, today’s school children can look forward to bearing those burdens, too.

None of that bothers Señor Trumpanzee in the least. He has an election to win and he believes there's a constituency that demands deadly air pollution, particularly coal burning pollution. Yesterday, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, reported for Washington Post readers on how Trump is working diligently to hamper cognitive development among children and worsen mental health in our own country. Today, the EPA is relaxing "rules that govern how power plants store waste from burning coal and release water containing toxic metals into nearby waterways. The proposals, which scale back two rules adopted in 2015, affect the disposal of fine powder and sludge known as 'coal ash,' as well as contaminated water that power plants produce while burning coal. Both forms of waste can contain mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals that pose risks to human health and the environment." Take that, Obama!

The new Trumpist rules reflect Trumpanzee’s "broader goal of bolstering America’s coal industry at a time when natural gas and renewable energy provide more affordable sources of electricity for consumers. Under the Obama-era rule, coal ash ponds leaking contaminants into groundwater that exceeded federal protection standards had to close by April 2019. The Trump administration extended that deadline until October 2020 in a rule it finalized last year. In August 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit instructed the EPA to require that companies overhaul ponds, including those lined with clay and compacted soil, even if there was no evidence that sludge was leaking into groundwater.

In a statement, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Obama-era rules “placed heavy burdens on electricity producers across the country.”

Andrew Wheeler by Nancy Ohanian

“These proposed revisions support the Trump administration’s commitment to responsible, reasonable regulations,” Wheeler said, “by taking a common-sense approach that will provide more certainty to U.S. industry while also protecting public health and the environment.”

... [I]f a company can demonstrate that it is shutting down a coal boiler, it can petition to keep its storage ponds open for as long as eight years, depending on their size. Slurry ponds smaller than 40 acres could get approval to stay in place until Oct. 15, 2023, officials said, while larger ones could remain open until Oct. 15, 2028.

Environmentalists have sharply criticized the proposals, arguing these containment sites pose serious risks to the public at a time when more frequent and intense flooding, fueled in part by climate change, could destabilize them and contaminate drinking water supplies that serve millions of people. The rules will be subject to public comment for 60 days.

During the past decade, Tennessee and North Carolina have experienced major coal ash spills that have destroyed homes and contaminated rivers, resulting in sickened cleanup workers and massive lawsuits.

The question of how to handle coal waste, which is stored in roughly 450 sites across the country, has vexed regulators for decades. The Obama administration negotiated for years with environmental groups, electric utilities and other affected industries about how to address the waste, which can poison wildlife and poses health risks to people living near storage sites.

Lisa Evans, an attorney specializing in hazardous waste law for the environmental group Earthjustice, said allowing the electric industry to extend the life of coal ash pits represents a particular threat to low-income and minority Americans, who often live near such installations.

“Allowing plants to continue to dump toxic waste into leaking coal ash ponds for another 10 years will cause irreversible damage to drinking water sources, human health and the nation’s waters,” Evans said in an email. She added it was not surprising the coal industry had lobbied against closing these storage sites. “Operating ponds is cheap. Closing them costs the utilities money,” she said.

It is also likely to add to ordinary consumers’ costs. Last year, for example, a member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission estimated it could cost ratepayers as much as $3.30 a month over 20 years-- between $2.4 billion and $5.6 billion-- to clean up Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s 11 coal ash ponds and six coal ash landfills in the state.

The Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, which lobbies on coal ash issues on behalf of electric utilities, said in its 2017 petition that the Obama-era rules were “burdensome, inflexible, and often impracticable” and that they “created a monolithic, one-size-fits-all regulatory regime.”

Delia Patterson, general counsel of the American Public Power Association, said the proposed rules would “bring more certainty to the industry and facilitate the safe management” of waste ponds.

...The vast majority of ponds and landfills holding coal waste at hundreds of power plants across the country have leaked toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater at facilities from Texas to Pennsylvania to Maryland, according to that analysis. The report acknowledged, however, that the groundwater data alone does not prove drinking-water supplies near the coal waste facilities have been contaminated. Power companies are not routinely required to test nearby drinking water wells. “So the scope of the threat is largely undefined,” the report stated.

The EPA on Monday will also revise requirements for how power plants discharge wastewater, which contain some of the same kind of contaminants. Under the Obama administration, EPA staff had concluded it was feasible to prohibit any releases of such toxic materials by having the units continually recycle their water. The agency has now concluded this is far more costly than originally anticipated, and technological advances have made it cheaper to filter and capture the waste through a membrane system, officials said.

Under the new rule, plants would be allowed to discharge 10 percent of their water each day, on a 30-day rolling average. The administration projects that the regulation would prevent 105 million pounds of pollutants from being released compared with the old standards because 18 affected plants would voluntarily adopt a more advanced filtration system. The administration also estimated it would save the industry $175 million each year in compliance costs and yield an additional $15 million to $69 million in annual public health and environmental benefits.

However, even if the 18 plants voluntarily adopted more advanced filtration techniques, they represent a minority of the nation’s total number of plants.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland, former director of science and technology at the EPA’s Office of Water, said the proposed rule “relaxes the 2015 treatment requirements allowing increased selenium discharges and [the] release of contaminated water from coal ash handling. Even worse, it exempts a large number of plants from these relaxed requirements, allowing them to discharge more pollutants and continue disposing of ash in leaking ponds.”

Evans said environmentalists are likely to challenge the new rule on coal ash storage and the federal government could again reverse course if a Democrat wins the presidency next year. She noted that, because 95 percent of coal ash ponds remain unlined, two-thirds lie within five feet of groundwater and 92 percent leak more than federal health standards allow, they could pose a risk to the public even as litigation winds its way through the federal courts.

“We have to hope that no wells are poisoned and no toxic waste is spilled in the interim,” she said. “Crossing your fingers is not a legal or sane way to regulate toxic waste.”

ScienceAlert warned last month that air pollution had gotten significantly worse in the U.S. since Trump occupied the White House, "a reversal after years of sustained improvement with significant implications for public health. In 2018 alone, eroding air quality was linked to nearly 10,000 additional deaths in the US relative to the 2016 benchmark, the year in which small-particle pollution reached a two-decade low, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University... Last year, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler disbanded the expert academic panel that reviewed and advised the agency on its standards for small-particle air pollution. In its place, the administration has hired consultants with links to the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries... One thing that's clear at the moment is the effect that rising pollution is having on mortality and life expectancy."

Two congressional candidates from Chicago had a lot to say about Trump's-- and conservatives' in general-- love affair with pollution-for-profit and how it impacts the families in their neighborhoods. Kina Collins: "In the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in IL-07, we see food deserts with a lack of fresh produce, industrial corridors pumping toxins into the air, and some areas that have higher levels of lead in the water than Flint, Michigan. In Chicago, there are hotspots where Black children are dying from asthma attacks at eight times the rate of white children because of the air quality and healthcare inequities. This is an environmental crisis. We need to be increasing funding for the EPA and other agencies to immediately and aggressively combat the causes of climate change, not cutting back on regulations and giving tax breaks to polluters. We cannot separate environmental justice from economic justice, and I plan to bring training and opportunities for green jobs into the south and west sides of Chicago so that they do not get left behind as we push to become the world leaders in the green industry. And we need leaders who are at the forefront of Congress pushing for the Green New Deal, who are actually fighting for Generation GND. We can afford to invest in the infrastructure and clean technology needed to end problems like lead in the water, we just need to have the moral authority to put the money where it is needed most. We don't need a Congressman who sits on the sidelines, because our planet doesn't have 20 more years to 'wait and see.' I will be fighting for environmental justice policies from Day One like my life depends on it-- because the future matters to me and to millions of other young Americans who are ready for bold action."

Marie Newman is also running for a seat held by a Democrat who doesn't seem to give a damn about corporate pollution. "With the undeniable amount of rebuilding and work we will have to do to address the climate crisis, my opponent’s lack of understanding and dismissal of the climate crisis alongside the amount of funding he is getting from the fossil fuel industries is truly disturbing. We must push past dinosaurs like Lipinski and get progressives elected ASAP. It is why I’m running."

Shelley Moore Capito Says She "Stands With West Virginia Against Obama’s War On Coal"-- As Her Constituents Line Up For Bottled Water

Most West Virginians never seem to learn any lessons about the natural resource exploitation companies that hold absolute power in their state. Their bottom lines-- the only priority they care about-- trump the well-being of the rest of society. That simple. It's why healthy societies protect themselves from predators with regulations and effective government. Now people in Charleston and 9 surrounding counties are praying the trucks of bottled water arrive and keep arriving, courtesy of the National Guard-- 9 counties where they can't use their regular water sources for drinking, cooking or showering. No coffee brewing either, although toilet flushing is still OK. That's about 300,000 people whose well-being was trampled because an outfit called "Freedom Industries," which processes and stores chemicals for the coal industry, accidentally allowed 5,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), an industrial chemical used in coal processing, to seep from a ruptured storage tank into the Elk River, just upstream of the intake pipes for the regional water company, about two-and-a-half miles from the junction of the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston.

Since Thursday, schools, restaurants, hotels and other businesses have been closed down in an area already struggling with an economy that is far from recovered. Yesterday, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin told CNN that "we're just not sure exactly how long it's going to take before it's acceptable to lift the do-not-drink ban." Formal charges have already begun in civil suits claiming that West Virginia American Water "failed to maintain an appropriate emergency response plan," and that Freedom "failed to properly maintain and store its chemicals." Freedom Industries' president poo-pooed the health threat, saying it has "very, very low toxicity" and insisting it poses no danger to the public. West Virginia American Water and government officials have a very different different take, which is why water use in the 9 counties is banned as unfit for human consumption.

Much of the anger centers around the coal-industry company from which the chemical leak occurred. And there's also frustration among some-- including Danny Jones, the mayor of West Virginia's most populated city and capital, Charleston-- that the water company trying to deal with the resulting mess still doesn't have a timeline for when things will return to normal.

"It's caused us more problems than you could ever imagine," Jones said Friday night, pointing out people can't do things like wash their hands after going to bathroom or wash their clothes.

"... It's a prison from which we would like to be released."

The area in question-- Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties-- voted overwhelmingly against Obama in his reelection bid, although was very supportive of conservative Democrats Senator Joe Manchin, Governor Tomblin and Rep. Nick Rahall. Most of the effected area is in WV-02, Shelley Moore Capito's district and she won every effected county in a landslide, despite her career-long opposition to effective regulations for the coal industry. Her only comment about the crisis as of yesterday was posted on her website: "Shelley Moore Capito stands with West Virginia against Obama’s war on coal. Stand with Shelley." She's running for the open U.S.Senate seat."

Instead of trying to drum up political support with her War on Coal nonsense, Capito ought to consider what this mess she helped create is going to mean to her state going forward.

MCHM is basically a poison and until the entire water system is flushed out, the water is unusable for anything except flushing toilets. That means no bathing, no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no nothing. In addition to the effect on daily domestic life, consider the impact on hospitals, hotels, and every other business that depends on copious amounts of water (restaurants, laundromats, caterers, barber shops, beauty salons, the list is endless…) and you’ve got a major economic disaster on your hands.

Speaking of hands, the advent of flu season adds another wrinkle. Frequent hand-washing is one of the top strategies for preventing spread of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control reports that flu cases are on the uptick and are widespread in many states. As of last week West Virginia was one of the few states not yet reporting widespread flu, but that could change with the spill’s impact on access to safe water for frequent washing.

Let’s note again that Crude MCHM is a fairly common industrial chemical in general use by the mining sector, not just coal.

However, the coal connection knocks yet another pin out from under the “clean coal” image that the industry has been trying so hard to prop up.

When you only apply “clean” to carbon emissions at the burn point, you could make the case that next-generation coal-burning technology makes coal a cleaner fuel.

However, that leaves not just one but a whole group of 800-pound gorillas in the room: the practice of blowing up entire mountains and filling in streams known as mountaintop coal mining, destructive subsidence from underground mines, mine fires, contaminated mine drainage, air pollution impacts from rail transportation, and the widespread practice of storing fly ash from coal power plants in open lagoons (they break, for one thing).

The practice of using toxic chemicals to prep mined coal hadn’t crossed our radar before the West Virginia disaster, but it looks like we’ll have to add that to the list, too.

Can Obama Save Us From A Koch Brothers Takeover?

It was almost as an afterthought that we appended an embed of the Robert Greenwald film, Koch Bros Exposed onto the end of a late Sunday night post about Romney and plutocracy. I can't emphasize enough how important it is for every swing state voter to see this movie before November 6... so here it is again. If you have concerns-- or doubts-- about the direction Romney would take this country should he get into the White House-- or what Republican control of the Senate and House will mean-- this documentary is an absolute must-see. Recall the speech Grover Norquist, the quintessential whore for plutocracy, gave at CPAC this summer:

All we have to do is replace Obama… We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget… We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate... Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.

David or Charles Koch-- let alone père Fred, the Bircher-- couldn't have summed up the right-wing case for Romney any better: a weak, vacillating nothing who will be what he's told by the Dark forces of American fascism.

Monday morning the Kochs must have killed a thousand kittens when they read the Washington Post report by Juliet Eilperin, Obama’s Record: Environmental Agenda Pushes Sweeping Attack On Air Pollution. I would have preferred to see the Obama Justice Department round up the banksters-- not to mention the Bush Regime war criminals-- and throw them in prison, but I've still be willing to give Obama the benefit of many doubts primarily because of his record on environmentalism. It's largely because of Obama that I drive a hybrid and that my home is powered by solar energy. That he's willing to stand up to the Kochs-- please watch the film-- is, alone, enough reason to reelect him.

The day after the November 2010 elections made clear President Obama’s greenhouse-gas legislation was doomed, he vowed to keep trying to curb emissions linked to global warming. There’s more than one way of “skinning the cat,” he told reporters.

Since then, Obama has used his executive powers-- including his authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act-- to press the most sweeping attack on air pollution in U.S. history. He has imposed the first carbon-dioxide limits on new power plants, tightened fuel-efficiency rules as part of the auto bailout and steered billions of federal dollars to clean-energy projects. He also has proposed slashing mercury emissions from utilities by 91 percent by 2016.

Obama’s end run around Republican opposition has delighted environmentalists, but it has drawn the ire of business groups and conservatives who argue he is crippling the coal industry, driving up energy costs and hurting the overall economy.

“Environmental regulation should be about protecting public health, and not about creating green jobs and mitigating hypothetical risk,” said Diane Katz, research fellow in regulatory policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Being unemployed and poor from overregulation, or zealous regulation, is a greater risk than global warming.”

When Obama was elected in 2008, environmentalists were confident their most-cherished goals-- ending coal-fired power plants, limiting greenhouse-gas emissions and invoking new protections for public lands-- were finally within reach.

Following up on a campaign promise, the president backed legislation that would slash America’s carbon output by 80 percent by 2050. Under the proposed cap-and-trade legislation, companies would buy and sell emissions credits allowing them to pollute more.

The bill was passed by the House, which at the time was controlled by Democrats, but in June 2009 it was blocked in the Senate by Republicans and moderate [NOTE: in Washington circles the word "moderate" now connotes far right-wing reactionaries] Democrats. When Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 elections, the bill was dead.

The administration turned to the Clean Air Act, which Obama allies said the president became familiar with while serving on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Using the law’s extensive authority, the administration issued six major environmental rules, including ones that placed limits on toxic air pollutants, greenhouse gases, soot and smog-forming pollutants.

The strategy was bolstered by some outside factors. Its effort to limit carbon emissions was benefited by the natural-gas boom; many utilities are switching from coal to natural gas, which is more economical and emits much less carbon. The automobile bailout gave Obama the leverage to impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards, and the Environmental Protection Agency faced several lawsuits pending from the Bush administration that needed to be resolved.

Obama’s standards for new vehicles, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, rank as “the biggest move to get us off our oil dependence by any president ever.” The rules, which took effect this year, will require the U.S. auto fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said the administration’s array of environmental rules go to the “sweet spot of energy security, economic opportunity and reducing pollution,” and fit into a favorite Obama theme during the 2008 campaign.

But the business community argues that the regulations are heavy-handed and are hurting the nation’s economic security.

“The utility sector, which we consider a part of the manufacturing sector, has been hit extremely hard,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources at the National Association of Manufacturers.

Utilities, he said, are shuttering older plants and holding off expanding existing ones out of fear that the EPA will deny them permits.

Last month, urged on by several business and energy groups, the GOP-controlled House passed the Stop the War on Coal Act, which would reverse several Obama regulations and proposals. It would bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, jettison the stricter fuel standards and give states primary authority over the storage and disposal of coal-combustion waste. But that bill has little chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Because the administration, faced by partisan polarization, has moved ahead on its own, opportunities for compromise have been lost, some say. Eisenberg notes that during former president Bill Clinton’s second term, the two parties negotiated passage of such significant environmental laws as the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act.

“The big difference is you had a Congress and an administration a little bit willing to work together on the issues,” he said.

...Obama friends and foes agree on one thing: The president will probably pursue an even more aggressive environmental agenda if reelected.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a statement he would expect Obama to push for more national monument designations in a second term. “From nearly day one,” he said, “the Obama Administration has attempted to impose policies that would block public access to public lands and cause significant economic harm and job loss.”

When it comes to putting more public land off limits to development, he added, “Such decisions should not be made by unilateral orders from the president” using a 106-year old law.

Environmental leaders expect Obama to try to take tougher action on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants if reelected.

Obama hinted as much during a speech to a crowd of Colorado State University students in August.

“We’re on track to emit fewer greenhouse gases this year than we have in nearly 20 years,” he said. “You can keep those trends going. That all happened because of you.”

The bill Eilperin referred to above, H.R. 3409, which the GOP calls the Stop the War on Coal Act was introduced by a shill for the mine owners and polluters, Bill Johnson (R-OH) and had 19 consponsors who take large legalistic bribes from the anti-environmnetal polluters. Although 13 Republicans broke with their leadership to oppose it, it passed 233-175, as the Blue Dogs and New Dems rallied, to their corporate masters' sides (including, dangerously, Shelley Berkley, the exceptionally corrupt New Dem who would sell her grandmother for a nickel and is the Democratic candidate for the Nevada Senate seat and an even worse Blue Dog, Joe Donnelly, who the Democrats are running for the Indiana Senate seat). One of the co-sponsors of the bill was West Virginia corporate whore (and crooked multimillionaire) David McKinley. McKinely is always on the side of the mine owners and always against the miners... always. His opponent this year is an advocate for miner families, Sue Thorn. I can't imagine she would ever have voted for this unserious legislation. Thorn:

Being a "Friend of Coal" isn’t enough, especially when regulations concern worker safety. In the recent draft 2013 budget, House Republicans added language that would prevent the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from implementing new limits on coal dust. An amendment by Congressman David McKinley will make it tougher to control combustible coal ash or unsafe air quality in mines, even though there is a surge in black lung cases. Black lung is now striking coal miners at younger ages and with less time in mines. This is no time to prevent the enforcement of these life-saving regulations.

When elected officials receive campaign contributions from coal barons they seem to ignore the needs of coal miners. I will always be a "Friend of Coal Miners."

The Koch brothers and the political whores like McKinley who are their willing puppets, are an existential threat to this country and to our families. It's enough of a reason to overlook Obama's many flaws and defeat Romney and it's enough of a reason to consider making a contribution to congressional candidates who will help the president along the way with a forward-looking environmental agenda.

The War On Coal... Miners

You may have read Kate Sheppard's story in Mother Jones last week about a wealthy coal exec who dressed up like a coal miner to help right-wing Republican Andy Barr beat right-wing Blue Dog Ben Chandler (KY-06). The only preference I have in this race is that they both lose. I don't have any idea why Chandler calls himself a Democrat. In the current session he voted with the Republicans on 67.42% of the crucial, substantive roll calls, more often than Republicans Ron Paul (R-TX) and Walter Jones (R-NC) and almost exactly tied with Tim Johnson (R-IL). The only Democrats with voting records to the right of his were 9 other Blue Dogs several of whom are transitioning into lobbying next year. As far as specific coal votes, he's been with the GOP two-thirds of the time on subsidies for coal, with the Republicans almost half the time on the environment (career-long) and, also career-long, with the GOP more than half the time on air pollution. 

Thursday Robert Semple penned an editorial for the NY Times you may have missed, 'Stop the War on Coal' Act, almost a public policy obituary for Republican conservationist Russell Train who died last week, age 92. Train was Nixon's first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and later was "administrator of the fledgling Environmental Protection Agency-- helping shape landmark statutes like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. His death serves as a reminder of the G.O.P.’s historic tradition of environmental stewardship, a tradition stretching as far back as Teddy Roosevelt, which the party has now repudiated." Completely and utterly repudiated... and with a vengeance.

Within hours of Mr. Train’s  death, Republican leaders in the House brought to the floor a bill called “Stop the War on Coal Act, “ which seeks to weaken and in some cases overturn laws and rules protecting the very things that Mr. Train stood for-- clean air, clean water, a stable climate and fair effective regulation of the big polluters, including but not exclusively the fossil fuel industry.

The bill (which the senate will certainly strike down) contains no new ideas.  According to a database compiled by Representative  Henry Waxman and the Democratic staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, House Republicans have voted an astonishing  302 times this year to hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency, weaken clean water and air rules, undermine protections for public lands  and coastal areas, and block action to address global warming – all while seeking to make the regulatory climate as favorable as possible for the oil, gas and coal industries. The  virtue of the latest bill (I use the word virtue loosely here) is that it contains just about all of those bad ideas in one place-- one-stop shopping as it were, for those who haven’t been keeping up with the Tea Party wrecking crew in the 112th Congress.

In recent years, much to his surprise as an old Republican loyalist, but perfectly in keeping with his values, Mr. Train found himself working behind the scenes to defend the Obama administration and especially its embattled E.P.A. chief, Lisa Jackson, in her efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change. He was also a strong supporter of President Obama’s most important environmental achievement so far, the agreement with Detroit to double automobile efficiency and greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by 2025.

One suspects, however, that his final years would have been much happier had he been spared the sight of his own party trashing much of what he worked for.

The bill passed 233-175, 13 Republicans voting against it and 19 Democrats, including Chandler, of course, voting for it. All but 3 of the Democrats who voted with the GOP were Blue Dogs and New Dems and the other 3 almost always voted with the Blue Dogs anyway. One of the co-sponsors of the bill was West Virginia corporate whore (and crooked multimillionaire) David McKinley. McKinely is always on the side of the mine owners and always against the miners... always. His opponent this year is an advocate for miner families, Sue Thorn. I can't imagine she would ever have voted for this unserious legislation. Thorn:

Being a "Friend of Coal" isn’t enough, especially when regulations concern worker safety. In the recent draft 2013 budget, House Republicans added language that would prevent the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from implementing new limits on coal dust. An amendment by Congressman David McKinley will make it tougher to control combustible coal ash or unsafe air quality in mines, even though there is a surge in black lung cases. Black lung is now striking coal miners at younger ages and with less time in mines. This is no time to prevent the enforcement of these life-saving regulations.

When elected officials receive campaign contributions from coal barons they seem to ignore the needs of coal miners. I will always be a "Friend of Coal Miners."

The DCCC is spending approximately $2 million to try to save Ben Chandler's seat in Kentucky this cycle-- so he can be around in 2013 to vote with the GOP two-thirds of the time again. But in Sue Thorn's very winnable race? The DCCC is spending not even two cents. They're perfectly happy to have McKinely sitting in a traditionally Democratic seat until 2014 when they can run some awful Blue Dog again-- like the one McKinley beat in 2010. We're not and we're trying to help Sue win her race. It's an uphill struggle. The working families she appeals to don't have money for campaign contributions and she can really use some help in getting her message out. Here's where you can help if you'd like to.

Black Lung Disease And The Republican Party

Yesterday, Blue America endorsed Sue Thorn, a populist Democrat from West Virginia, who's running for Congress in the first district (the northern third of the state). We didn't really get a chance to talk much about black lung disease, something most of us don't come into contact with. But most of "us" don't live in West Virginia or in other coal mining regions. Black lung disease is something Sue talks a lot about while she's meeting voters. It helps define what it means, from her perspective, to support her state's crucial coal industry. She's been harshly critical of a GOP budget move that would prevent the Labor Department from working to end black lung disease.

Republican lawmakers in the House Appropriations Committee have added language to the Department of Labor budget bill for 2013 that would prevent the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) from implementing or enforcing a proposal meant to combat black lung disease by reducing miner’s exposure to coal dust.

Black lung disease is caused by exposure to coal dust and results in a slow, painful death for those who suffer from it. West Virginians recently learned that black lung disease, an agonizing and irreversible condition that kills thousands of coal miners, is on the rise. In the last decade, black lung disease has doubled, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity and NPR News. Sue Thorn criticized the bill and called for the removal of the provision:

“As proud Mountaineers who love our state and revere our miners, we can’t remain silent on this issue. Our miners put their lives on the line to provide for their families and put food on the table every day. They deserve better.

“It’s become evident that Congress can’t be trusted to protect our miners. Two-faced lawmakers, bought and paid for by the coal industry, inserted dangerous language into the labor appropriations bill that would stop efforts to end this debilitating, deadly disease.

“Coal and utility companies have consistently provided jobs for West Virginians who need to provide for their families, but we must always remember that a business exists first and foremost to make a profit. Coal industry lobbyists will fight tooth and nail against mine safety and health legislation because it might affect their bottom line.

“It’s time to get big money out of politics. It’s no coincidence that the same shameless Republican lawmakers that oppose improved MSHA regulation receive massive checks at election time from coal industry CEOs and PACs. As House Republicans scheme to pass despicable legislation that would keep MSHA from doing its job, miners are suffering and dying.

"I won’t sell my soul to any money-hungry industry. I’m running for Congress with small donations from everyday people because that’s who I represent. I won’t take money from corporations that expect me to spread fearmongering propaganda for campaign cash. I won’t use outrageous scare tactics to make West Virginians think federal regulation will strip them of their paychecks. I’ll vote in the best interests of West Virginia. People’s lives will always take precedence over profits.”

A week ago Sue sent a letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette slapping McKinley's crackpot criticism of United Steel Workers Union president Leo Gerard. Sleazy multimillionaire McKinley claimed Gerard didn't understand working people and that he's disrespectful of coal miners. McKinley was feeling especially feisty since he had just joined all his right-wing colleagues in McKinley voting against new coal dust regulation to prevent coal miner deaths.

"In the last 40 years, black lung disease killed or helped kill 70,000 coal miners. This torturous, deadly disease is caused by exposure to coal dust in the mines. In the last decade, black lung disease has doubled among coal miners, and cases are now being found in younger miners. Yet McKinley just voted against enacting a new federal rule that would combat the problem and save lives.

"McKinley also failed to support the Robert C. Byrd Mine and Workplace Safety legislation when it was introduced in the US House of Representatives in April 2011, and has failed to speak out in support of the legislation since it was re-introduced last week by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).

"McKinley's criticisms of Gerard ring hollow coming from someone who consistently puts coal company profits before coal miners and their safety. Maybe McKinley's comments are more reflective of the fact that his campaign started receiving funding from Massey Energy's Don Blankenship in 2010, shortly after the Upper Big Branch mine disaster and Blankenship's contributions exceeded Federal Election Committee rules. While McKinley's biggest funders are coal companies and he may be a friend of theirs, he's certainly no friend of coal miners."

It's essential to all of us that we elect men and women like Sue Thorn to Congress. What the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats have in store for ordinary working people-- the 99%-- is very much like black lung disease-- a slow painful death. There's no such thing as a contribution too small, so, if you can, please consider helping Sue's grassroos campaign here at our ActBlue page

Bernie Sanders to Jim Inhofe: "Stop Poisoning Our Children"

Blue America has only endorsed ONE senator running for reelection-- ONE. And here's an example of why: Wednesday Bernie Sanders stood up on the floor of the Senate (video above) and called on Jim Inhofe to "stop poisoning our children" for the sake of his campaign donors. Inhofe is a blatant corporate whore who has taken $2,294,442 in bribes from energy and natural resources companies, more than any other current Members of Congress other than McCain (R-AZ), Joe Barton (R-TX), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Miss McConnell (R-KY). The legislation he proposed in the Senate-- which Bernie's barn-burner speech helped defeat-- was meant to exempt coal companies from EPA emission standards meant to protect the public from mercury poisoning. Inhofe's resolution was defeated 46-53, with 5 Republicans too ashamed to go along with Inhofe's deadly proposal. They crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats. On the way across, of course, they passed an equal number of Democratic corporate whores-- Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, and Mary Landrieu-- going in the other direction. Miraculously, conservative Democrats Claire McCaskill, Tom Carper, Mark Begich and Jon Tester stuck with the Democrats. And even more miraculously, coal state advocate Jay Rockefeller had a profile in courage moment that could hurt him politically in West Virginia in 2014.

Standing at the back of the Senate chamber with a handful of his colleagues looking on, the 75-year-old Democrat delivered a lofty speech before the vote, warning that attempts to demonize air pollution rules will only hurt the coal industry as it tries to stay competitive in an increasingly challenging economic environment. Calling the Inhofe effort “foolish,” Rockefeller said the long-term health effects of the rule would be “enormous.”

“This is a critical and contentious time in the Mountain State,” Rockefeller said. “The dialogue on coal, its impacts and the federal government’s role has reached a fevered pitch. ... West Virginians understandably worry that a way of life and the dignity of a job is at stake. Change and uncertainty in the coal industry is unsettling.

“But my fear is that concerns are also being fueled by the narrow view of others with divergent motivations-- one that denies the inevitability of change in the energy industry, and unfairly leaves coal miners in the dust,” Rockefeller said. “The reality is that many who run the coal industry today would rather attack false enemies and deny real problems than find solutions.”

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a staunch ally of the environmental community, immediately hailed the speech.

“I believe when the next historian writes a book about leadership, courage and integrity in the United States Senate, that this speech today will be featured in that book,” she said.

Rockefeller's stand is particularly compelling in light of an AP/Roper poll that came out this week highlighting the public's intense concerns about national health care policy. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Healthcare Act, as seems likely, 77% of respondents want the president and Congress to come up with a better system. Only 19% of Americans agree with the Republicans that the system is fine the way it is.

Mercury Poisoning-- A Thing Of The (Republican) Past?

Part of the GOP's deranged version of libertarianism-- the faux "freedom" we talked about earlier-- is a world where selfish and greedy sociopaths have no rules and no regulations holding them back from maximizing profits, no matter what they do to the environment or anyone else. And Obama hasn't always been as stalwart a champion against these dangerous predators as the people who elected him had reason to hope he would be. That's why there was so much general rejoicing among mainstream Americans yesterday when the EPA announced a new rule that will protect Americans from mercury poisoning from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Republicans (and their Blue Dog and ConservaDem allies), on the other hand, are throwing a shit fit. It matters not a whit to them that the new rule will save save tens of thousands of lives annually and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities and respiratory diseases.

The League of Conservation Voters put it like this:

The Obama administration has set the first-ever national standards for mercury and other toxic air pollution for power plants. These historic new health standards will save lives, prevent illnesses like asthma and bronchitis, avoid hospitalizations and missed days at work, and create jobs in pollution control technology.

Our children have waited long enough to breathe clean air without the threat of inhaling toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants. The Obama administration’s new standards will help protect us from many airborne toxins, including mercury, arsenic, lead, dioxins, acid gases and other harmful pollutants.

...The significance of these new standards cannot be understated. The negative health impacts of toxic air pollution are well-known and documented-- and the EPA is estimating that these new standards will save thousands of lives, prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma and avert 11,000 cases of acute childhood bronchitis every year starting in 2015.

Bernie Sanders, who, as a member of the Senate environment committee, has been fighting this battle for years, stressed, "The EPA rule would prevent the release of about 90 percent of the mercury in coal and cut emissions of other toxic substances, such as arsenic." He told his Vermont constituents yesterday that he "strongly supports the Clean Air Act standards announced today that will slash toxic air pollution, such as mercury and arsenic, from our nation's power plants. . . This clean air rule is long overdue, and I commend EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for protecting our families’ health and wellbeing."

The battle isn't exactly over; Republicans will fight hard to turn back the clock on behalf of Big Coal and the Chamber of Commerce. Oklahoma reactionary Sen. Jim Inhofe is already spreading lies that the country's electric power system is endangered by the new rules, which he claims will force power plants to shut down. But there isn't a single power plant that is shutting down, not one, not anywhere. But when did reality ever get in the way of right-wing propaganda? Off the record, most utilities executives say there'll be little impact on reliability as the industry moves to meet new 21st-century standards. The CEO of American Electric Power, Mike Morris, did go on the record, though, saying that investments in cleaning up the plants create jobs, “no question about that.” For every dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, Americans will receive $3 to $9 in health benefits. That's a good return on the dollar, although anathema to sociopathic libertarians.

Graham Parker was taling about a different kind of mercury poisoning, kind of:

Fight To Save Our Democracy Continues... In West Virginia-- CNN Airs The Blair Mountain Documentary Tonight At 8

A day or two ago I was driving along listening to NPR and suddenly I was listening to an old guy in West Virginia talking about the struggle to save his home from the coal company's plans for removing the mountaintop he and his family grew up on. Not much new there. But what was compelling about the radio documentary was how it laid out the pressures and stresses this guy was facing from his neighbors and friends. I was struck that by fighting to save his land and his home from the greed-driven coal czars, he was bringing down hatred and scorn on his head for being "selfish" and for ruining the town's economy and destroying the jobs market!

It turns out the fight for Blair Mountain is a long, historic one. Tonight CNN is airing a special by Soledad O'Brien at 8pm (ET). Take a look at the trailer above and the clip below. Here's some background-- another NPR report-- that helps put it all into some kind of context:

The protests in Wisconsin may be a big turning point for organized labor in America. It's not yet clear whether Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's plan to end state workers' collective bargaining power will destroy the unions in his state or whether it will actually re-energize them-- both in Wisconsin and nationally.

What is clear is that we're all spectators in a pretty significant chapter of history: the history of organized labor in America.

And recently, we went to a place that can probably be described as a kind of Bastille or Lexington and Concord of that history.

It's called Blair Mountain, and it's located in a southern pocket of West Virginia.

In late summer 1921, Blair Mountain was the site of the largest uprising in American history since the Civil War. It was the only time in history that U.S. air power has been used against American civilians.

"This is what's left of the town of Blair," Kenny King tells Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, as they stand next to a stream. "There, maybe, I think I counted maybe about 35 houses left."

King is a third-generation coal man. His grandfather and father were miners. King himself works as a chemical analyst for a coal company.

And here in Blair, in Logan County, W.Va., well, is the heart of coal country.

"It's been underground mined a lot, but there's still quite a bit of coal left," King says. "Yeah, there's millions of tons, I'd say, in that area."

West Virginia's been called the Saudi Arabia of coal. It produces more than a third of all the coal mined in the U.S. More than half the energy Americans use is powered by burning those black rocks. The lights in your house, your TV, maybe the computer you're reading this story on-- they all work thanks to coal.

The other thing about West Virginia is its poverty rate, one of the highest in America, even though coal prices just hit a 15-year high.

Almost a quarter of the people in Logan County live below the poverty level. They're people left behind by the changes in technology and technique that have allowed coal companies to earn more money and hire fewer miners.

This story, though, is only partially about jobs. It's really about history-- the battle over what to remember and whether to remember it at all.

No one has the exact details of what happened here in late August/early September 1921, but the basic story says around 10,000 coal miners took up arms against the private militias employed by West Virginia's Stone Mountain Mining Co. For five days they fought for the right to organize-- to join unions.

"From all the artifacts found here, there had to be hundreds of men up here," King says. "I mean, there's probably thousands of shell cases scattered around here."

As many as 100 men died in the fighting. It got so bad that President Harding sent a detachment of federal troops to crush the rebellion.

None of this happened in a vacuum. Tension had been building for years. Just a year before, union-busting mercenaries, who worked for a private agency called Baldwin-Felts, shot and killed the pro-union mayor of the nearby town of Matewan.

At the time, most states had laws against organizing. It didn't help that Harding's administration was decidedly anti-labor.

The worry was the unions would bog down industry and put the brakes on America's rapid economic growth.

The problem for the wage earners, at least in Logan County, was that they didn't have a whole lot of options.

"They had the yellow-dog contract which said that, basically, if you took a job at this mine, you could not associate with anyone in the union, you couldn't join," says Doug Estepp, a local historian who runs tours of the area. "You were basically fired, blacklisted and evicted-- and probably beaten on the way out by the guards just for good measure."

The coal companies owned your house, they paid you in credits that could only be spent on highly inflated food at the company-owned store, and if you complained about safety, you were fired.

The private security men from Baldwin-Felts would threaten, beat and sometimes murder agitators-- all with impunity.

And so it all came to a head in late August 1921. The miners of Logan and Mingo counties had had enough.

Back in the '70s, a documentary called Even the Heavens Weep featured a few of the survivors of the battle, including Paul Maynard.

"I don't know, there was thousands around here, but they was coming in from Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the miners was," Maynard said. "They told the government that if they didn't open up Logan County, that they was gonna open it up themselves and blow it away."
Although the workers outnumbered the coal company guards, they were also outgunned.

"They were facing big odds. The coal operators had machine guns, they had tommy guns, a lot of high-powered rifles. They even had a small artillery piece up on one of the mountains here-- we're not sure where," Estepp says.

After five days, the rebellion was crushed. Hundreds of workers were tried for insurrection and treason. The legal fees bankrupted the United Mine Workers Union, and for the next decade, it almost disappeared.

...There are only about 16,000 miners in West Virginia today. Mountaintop removal doesn't require as much manpower as underground mining. These are coveted jobs; they pay well. So for the most part, miners are more interested in seeing the economy grow than preserving what they see as just another mountain.

One 22-year-old named Jordon sums up the consensus view around here: "We got to mine the coal to make the money. Period. That's all there is to it," he says. "I've been around this my entire life. My dad was a strip miner, my grandfather was-- that's all I've known, that's all I'll ever know."

About a 90-minute drive from Logan County, at the ornate state Capitol in Charleston, Simmons is part of a group trying to get Blair Mountain back onto the National Register. He says the struggle isn't only about jobs and mining rights. It's also about whether to remember Blair Mountain or to sweep it under the rug.

Just as in 1921, Simmons says, when West Virginia's political establishment was wholly controlled by coal interests, "things haven't changed that dramatically, that the long arm of King Coal can't reach into state government and make things happen in its favor."

Most people oppose mountaintop removal-- 57% in the latest poll, but it doesn't matter to King Coal or the politicians they control... or the 36% of people who don't have a problem with the controversial technique or the impact it has on the environment and on peoples' lives.

"They are probably not miners," Diann Kish said of the poll respondents. A neighbor of Bella's and the wife of a retired miner, she supports the process.

Thirty-six percent agree with Kish, according to the poll. Seven percent didn't have an opinion.

"Coal-- let me tell you, this fed our families," she said holding a baseball-sized chunk of the black mineral in her hand.

"Doesn't bother me what other people think," Kish said. "It's not their livelihood."

While the work has provided for families, it's not without its drawbacks. Recent studies by West Virginia University associate professor Michael Hendryx find "multiple illnesses" in mining areas. "Higher rates of cancer is one of them. Higher forms of chronic heart disease, heart attacks, and lung disease like (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), kidney disease," Hendryx said. "We have found evidence for all of those."

"I think it really is the biggest public health problem that West Virginia faces," he added.

The coal industry is spending $35 million or more to try to persuade us that there is such a thing as "clean" coal. Unfortunately, there isn't.

"Most people know coal isn’t clean, but that hasn’t stopped the coal industry from trying to convince us otherwise."
-- Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog, introducing the website Coal is dirty!, a "Clean Coal Body Slam" created in collaboration with Greenpeace USA and the Rainforest Action Network to combat a massive P.R. onslaught from the coal industry

The magic words, it appears, are "carbon capture and sequestration." I don't think you want to know any more about them than I do, but I'm afraid we may be hearing them a lot, unfortunately from people who are trying to sell us bogus or at least wildly exaggerated science indicating that with these new technologies coal can be made clean and safe. It appears that they're prepared to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to sell their message.

This drives the folks we trust on environmental and energy issues bonkers -- naturally including our go-to webguy A Siegel, who's waxing rapturous today on his Energy Smart blog about the Coal is dirty! site and its star-studded roster of environmental researchers, activists, and journalists. As Siegel says, "Kevin might not have a $35 million budget but he has a team worth millions in terms of quality."

Kevin Grandia explains:

In essence, this site exists to sell the idea that coal is dirty. Pretty easy to do when you consider the facts and clear out the rhetoric. Like the fact that mercury emissions from coal fired-power plants continues to rise and that carbon capture and storage remains an elusive pipe dream that will take another 40 years to deploy on a commercial scale.

Siegel notes that the new site is already going gangbusters, with:

* a section of 10 Coal Hard Facts, starting with "Coal increases rates of disease" ("According to the American Lung Association, 24,000 people a year die prematurely because of pollution from coal-fired power plants. And every year 38,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital admissions and an additional 550,000 asthma attacks result from power power plant pollution")

* Ask Dr. Coal, with "straight talk about coal and your family's health"

* a section of Coal Myths (including "Carbon Capture and Sequestration Is a Myth")

* and a debut "top story," "How Clean Coal Cooks Your Brain," by Jeff Goodell, acontributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, from which Siegel highlights this "critically true point":

In the end, the “clean coal” campaign is about using the tools of the 21st century to keep us locked in the 19th century. Like other greenwashing campaigns, it’s about using the iconography of sexy technology and down-home Americana to maintain the status quo.

The goal is not to solve our problems, but to perpetuate our addiction …

After decades of stoking the engines of denial and obfuscation on global warming, it’s nice that Big Coal wants to be a good citizen. But just because your pusher decides to shower and shave, don’t delude yourself into thinking that he cares about your welfare.

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